JAKARTA: A convicted bombmaker who was released from prison last year attacked a police station in Indonesia’s main island of Java on Wednesday, killing an officer and wounding at least 10 others, officials said.
The attacker entered the Astana Anyar police station in Bandung, West Java at around 8:20 a.m. with a motorcycle, detonating one of two bombs he was carrying as officers gathered for a morning assembly. The other explosive was defused.
“This morning a suicide bomb attack took place and the perpetrator died,” National Police Chief Gen. Listyo Sigit Prabowo told reporters when he visited the station in the afternoon.
The injured comprised mostly police officers with at least one civilian wounded, he said.
“He is affiliated with Jamaah Ansharut Daulah group in Bandung or West Java, and at this time our team is continuing work to solve the incident that has occurred.”
Footage taken from the scene showed body parts near the damaged lobby of the station and people running out of the building as white smoke engulfed the facility.
Prabowo identified the attacker as Agus Sujatno and said dozens of notes were found at the crime scene with messages of protests against Indonesia’s new criminal code.
Also known by his alias Abu Muslim, he was released from the Nusakambangan prison island last year after completing a four-year sentence on charges of terrorist funding and making explosives used in a 2017 attack that also took place in Bandung.
“While in prison, he was not cooperative and was still hard-line,” Irfan Idris, deradicalization director at the National Counter-Terrorism Agency, told Arab News.
JAD, which had pledged allegiance to Daesh, was responsible for several other deadly suicide bombings in the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation.
This includes the 2018 church attacks in Surabaya that involved three families carrying out suicide bombings, killing nearly 30 people including the attackers themselves.
Stanislaus Riyanta, security and terrorism analyst from the University of Indonesia, said the attack was triggered by the new criminal code passed on Tuesday.
“They are looking for momentum. When they get it, such as with the passing of the new criminal code, they will use it,” Riyanta told Arab News.
Riyanta said Indonesian authorities should be cautious not only because the new criminal code was recently passed, but also ahead of Christmas and New Year holidays.
“This is a group with their own ideology, an ideology of violence, and they are anti-government, anti-democracy,” he added. “When there is a right moment, they will carry out their attacks.”